For the first time today since the pandemic started, more than a year and a half ago, the B.C. government is giving the full picture of how many people are in hospital with COVID-19.
In a news release, the Ministry of Health said today that as of Tuesday, there were 152 patients in hospitals across B.C. who had been admitted for COVID-19 earlier on and are no longer contagious. That number of patients is in addition to the 332 patients in hospital that the government reported that day, meaning there were actually 484 people in hospital with the virus that day.
“For planning purposes, these patients are still included in the overall COVID-19 counts for the hospital,” the release says.
It’s unclear why the government has withheld data on non-contagious hospital patients during the entirety of the pandemic.
In the release, the ministry admitted to keeping a set of data on hospitalizations on COVID-19 patients – the actual number – separate from what is being reported to the public each day.
“These patients may require longer periods of hospitalization, but for reasons that are no longer directly tied to COVID-19, or they may have contracted COVID-19 while in hospital and still need care for the underlying issue they were admitted for. This means some patients who entered hospital or critical care as a COVID-19 patient may no longer be counted as COVID-19 patients once they are no longer infectious, even though they remain in hospital.”
The Ministry says guidelines say to report COVID-19 hospitalizations the way it does, saying that Alberta, Ontario and the Centre for Disease Control in the U.S. report hospitalizations the same way.
The information from government came after intense criticism and scrutiny following a CTV Vancouver report questioning the Ministry of Health’s practice. Critics have since said that the government needs to provide daily data on hospitalizations in a more transparent way, which will help better explain to the general public the challenges hospitals and hospital staff are facing.
